The Weak and The Damned (3 page)

The rifle was still
in his closet and now she had good cause to use it, but for some
reason William could not move. All William could do was stare at the
beach and, with a sense of alarm, William realized that he was
falling asleep.

Captain William M.
Lawson awoke to the sight of the woman, fully dressed, leaning over
him. She'd replaced her torn clothes with an outfit William vaguely
recognized as belonging to Angel. Realizing that the woman would have
entered the closet to get the outfit, William tried to stand fully
expecting her to lift the rifle into view at any moment.

Instead of moving at
his command William's body only twitched spasmodically.

 
Horrified,
William tried to turn his head and realized he couldn't feel
anything. He couldn't feel the bed beneath him or the weight of his
own limbs.

Seeing the dawning
realization in his eyes, the woman smiled. Her smile was cold and her
tear swollen eyes were as flat and dead as any serpents.

 
She
sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and regarded the prone, and
plainly terrified, William coolly.  "Everyone thinks that
the virus either kills you or brings you back dead and hunger."
Her smile turned bitter "They are wrong. Sometimes it makes you
sick, and you get better, but you are just a little bit different."

 
William
tried to move his body away from her, but it refused to respond to
his desperate internal commands. Ignoring his twitching body, the
woman continued talking in the conversational tone that one would use
when discussing the weather with a stranger.

"Before today I
thought losing the last of my friends in that stupid accident was the
worst thing that could happen to me."  She laughed, and the
sound of her laughter chilled William's soul. "Today you showed
me that I was wrong."

 
She
stood up abruptly and William could hear her walking around the room.
The sounds of rustling paper reached him and he realized she was
going through the maps.

"This happened
once before." Williams' heart was hammering now, he could hear
the pounding and it almost drowned out the sound of her voice. "It
was a guy I kind of liked, but after we had sex he ended up just like
you.

That is why I tried
to stop you." William heard the window open and smelled the salt
breeze and heard the crashing waves.

 
"I
wanted to help you, help everyone here." She was looming over
him again, her eyes sparkling and venomous. "Get up and get
dressed now!"

The words were
hissed into his face and, to his astonishment, William found himself
standing and dressing more rapidly than he would have thought
possible.

While he dressed the
woman sat in the chair he had occupied a million years ago. She
absently toyed with his two-way radio and gazed at him thoughtfully.

 
"Not
everything you've done here is bad," She admitted reluctantly
"you've organized things nicely and I am sure once the bad
elements are gotten rid of the ones who are left will be able to help
me rebuild."

William stood in the
middle of the room staring at the woman blankly. She threw the
two-way radio to William and he caught it reflexively.

 
"You
have several orders to give and then you will take me to where you
keep the other women.

When the dead things
I've called arrive here I want to be sure that all of your victims
are kept safe." As the meaning of her words sunk in William
wished himself dead and her dead with him.

He looked past her
and out of the window. He thought he could see something, or several
somethings, coming out of the surf. William suddenly realized why the
scouts had stopped encountering the undead.

Somehow this woman
could control the dead things, as thoroughly as she was now
controlling him. At her silent order, he found himself raising the
two-way radio to his mouth. The last thing he thought of before he
began issuing the commands that would doom his men was Angel's pale,
tear-stained, face as she stared at the slowly dying body of her
lover.

End